By: Carlos Ortiz

A few days ago, talk show superstar Oprah Winfrey began a gigantic campaign to expose the disadvantages of the African American community in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.

While it is true this was a first step to confront the inequalities that this crisis has exposed, it has also served to expose another fundamental deficiency: leadership in the Hispanic community in the United States.

Because if we don't have a Hispanic Oprah, who can defend us?

The Queen of the so-called "Talk Shows", who has a history of suffering from pneumonia, which puts her as a person at high risk of contracting the dreaded disease, has pointed in different interventions on her own channel, as well as interviews with different television networks, inequalities in health care services in the black and Hispanic community in the United States.

This added to the medical history of the minority communities in which cases of Diabetes, hypertension and asthma abound, among other pre-existing medical conditions and the difficulty of access to health services, put African-Americans and Hispanics at a disadvantage in the face of this and other health crisis.

Among Hispanics, the disadvantage increases when it comes to immigrant communities without any access to health services or economic and social assistance, despite being a greater component of the workforce that continues to operate in the United States under quarantine rules. and social distancing imposed by numerous states.

A stupid rationing that forgets that the coronavirus does not ask for papers before infecting, nor does it discriminate against those who will infect these inhumanly forgotten people.

In an altered world, where now people armed to the teeth and carrying assault rifles cry out for the "freedom" to catch and infect ourselves with the deadly virus, to ensure the reelection of their leader, Hispanics in the United States wait in quarantine for the birth of a leader who opens doors for us to equal rights in the face of the pandemic.

And so far, nothing.

In the past there have been sporadic attempts at leadership, facing difficult times for the Hispanic community.

Artists like Jenifer López emotionally drawing attention to the detention of undocumented immigrant children in cages.

Cuban Gloria Estefan and her husband Emilio are other Hispanics who have expressed their concern and pain in the face of the suffering of immigrants.

The activist Dolores Huerta and politicians, among whom ex-representative Luis Gutiérrez and Senator Marco Rubio, are just a few names with enough weight to lead a movement that transcends the coronavirus crisis and takes us to a more dignified and equal treatment in this great country that we all love and for which many of us work to the last consequences.

Photo: Oprah Network